Thursday, June 22, 2006

Who Created The 'Hoax'? Inquiring Minds Are Still None The Wiser

Continuing yesterday's experiment with tuning out the rantings of internet Nazis, here's the second and hopefully final part of an increasingly hilarious attempt to persuade a raggle-taggle group of racialists, Holocaust deniers and Holocaust sceptics at The Phora to name the author of the alleged 'Hoax'.

As our good friend Xcalibur of the valiant RODOH Watch found out to his cost when he actually read through the original thread, and complained about in the comments below, there's much to be said for this hearing-one-side-of-a-telephone-conversation approach. Above all, you don't have to listen to the deniers ranting, rambling and drooling. Oh, the things we spare you, dear readers...

After a hard day's work, Sulla the Dictator returns circa 7pm Californian time to find that the shambling jelly monsters have been ululating in his absence. But first, a bit of thread housekeeping.

I ignored your post because you repeated yourself. You didn't seem to understand my reply. When there are documents and evidence which support 'exaggerations', then either they ARE NOT exaggerations or they have been fabricated (the evidence). This thread isn't about how much of the Holocaust you believe in, its about who is doing the actual leg work of fabricating evidence in your people's world. If you don't think that happened, then I don't see what your point is here.

This done, it's time for a new angle on the question. Might the Evil Commies have hoaxed the Hoax? Let's find out...

Well it looks like the Illuminati, the Templars and the New York Times are the best we can come up with at the moment, so I have another question that might get a more clear response.

The shadows of the Cold War were already being cast over Europe in late 1945 and 1946. Why would the Soviets support a charade about this genocide of European Jews in 1946? The Soviets were FAR less comitted to any consistant theme or government message to its own people than the West was, since there were really no consequences for lying to its public. The Soviets also had an interest in delegitimizing the West German regime, and beyond that the victorious leaders of both England and the United States. What better way to do that than expose this massive conspiracy to frame the German people?

And why would this conspiracy to cover up the Holocaust continue from one General Secretary to the next? Revolving members of the party apparatus had an interest in 'sweeping away' the mistakes of the last, 'exposing lies and crimes'. Why would Nikita Khrushchev reveal the atrocities of Joseph Stalin, and NOT his conspiracy to frame the West German workers who the Soviets were interested in swaying?

Why would the Soviets engage in a pro-Jewish conspiracy while they were arming the states of the Arab league, or considering military intervention against Israel in 1967?

Why would the Soviets be training members of the PLO while hiding this bombshell?

Of course, there's always the Illuminati. The Soviets need to be concerned with their wrath. (rofl) But why wouldn't the Soviets LEAK this information to someone else? There were plenty of neutral powers, such as the Indians, or the Swiss, or the South Africans. Why wouldn't the Soviet educational system allow an exchange program of academics to 'stumble across' this evidence? Why wouldn't the Soviets leak this information to the Egyptians? We scoff at these Arab Holocaust deniers because they're just angrier versions of ours. But if they had documents in hand, that would be a different story.

Does this prod more of a response from the deniers? No, of course not. The shambling jellymonsters want to talk about their pre-programmed debating 'points' instead:

This is an academic claim? Did you ever consider how....childish....it is to suggest that illustrative metaphor be interpreted as literal fact? Do you believe that there were 10,000 tribes of Gaul? Or that Pickett's Charge was resulted in a literal bath of blood?

And again, you don't seem to understand the point of this post. The levels of blood seeping out of the ground in a Nazi killing field is not relevant. That isn't "the Holocaust". Thats a testament to the horror of the aftermath of such butchery.

What you don't seem to realize, however, is that there is PLENTY of evidence for the slaughter at Babi Yar. This is, in fact, one of the Eastern front actions that I don't think even Holocaust deniers on this board would say didn't happen.

The action was done by Sonderkommando 4a. The report reads as follows:"Berlin, October 2, 1941 Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service 48 copies (36th copy) OPERATIONAL SITUATION REPORT USSR No.101 Einsatzgruppe C, Location: Kiev Sonderkommando 4a in collaboration with Einsatzgruppe HQ and two Kommandos of police regiment South, executed 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941. Einsatzgruppe D, Location: Nikolayev The Kommandos continued the liberation of the area from Jews and Communist elements. In the period covered by the report, the towns of Nikolayev and Kherson in particular were freed of Jews. Remaining officials there were appropriately treated. From September 16 to 30, 22,467 Jews and Communists were executed. Total number 35,782. Investigations again show that the high Communist officials everywhere have fled to safety. On the whole, leading partisans or leaders of sabotage detachments have been seized."

I mean, to deny this is simply ridiculous. But if you're going to do it, the purpose of this thread is to identify who made it up, who ordered it to be made up, and who continues to force people to believe it.

Thats not a claim that historians have ever made. I believe that was in an editorial written by some fellow who was at Buchenwald. How is that at all relevant?

This is a ridiculous way to talk about history. Were we to apply it, we would have to stop believing in half of the battles that took place in the Classical world, as someone would say that he was 'imbued with the strength of Mars'.

Identify it. I no longer deal with generalities.

Well, lets start with a quesiton. How many books have you read on the Holocaust?

No reply. Next up, the increasingly obnoxious Wintermute, spewing venom, runs charging at Sulla and impales himself on the usual contradictions.

Except that you ignored specific cited examples. Thats not surprising, indeed its par for course with people like you. To make the above statement you quite simply must ignore the flood of Soviet revisions, retractions, and policy shifts as well as admissions, inquiries, and falsehoods. But thats fine. Ignoring facts is what you do. Of course, its quite possible you never learned them.

One of the things that seems so convenient for people like you is that since you don't believe in "Orthodox" history, you never have to bother to learn it. Which allows for all your website fiction. Much easier to browse, and how fortunate! It conforms with your pre-existing biases!

Thats how someone like you can come here and say "The Soviets had to be concerned with a loss of legitimacy" or "the Soviets were worried about public lies". Which is utter rubbish. The Soviet leadership could care less about the 'public reaction' to what it did. You would know that if you bothered to actually learn about the USSR.

"Nothing stretched the creative powers of the politruks more than the job of explaining the news. Looking at Soviet foreign policy in the last few months of peace, one almost feels sorry for them. Most troops were not sophisticated men, and many could not reas a paper for themselves, but even a semiliterate drunk would have noticed a curious change of police in 1939. On 23 August the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany.Red Army men had been forced to sit through sermons on the threat of Fascism for a decade. Now, suddenly, they were told that the Germans had become their allies. On Stalin's sixtieth birthday in December 1939, the telegrams of congratulation included one from Adolf Hitler. The Fuehrer included his best wishes "for the happy future of the friendly people of the Soviet Union:.Neither civilians nor troops knew what to think about the news of the pact. When their turn came to explain it, political staff were forced to draw upon the revolutionary rhetoric of historic progress. It was always possible to talk of international proletarian solidarity, and the German working class held a special place in Soviet imaginations, not least because its industry was so admired. But the idea of a treaty with Hitler could only be a shock. Cadets in one staff college thought the story was a spoof. Elsewhere, a politruk simply gave up when someone asked him if the next war would be an imperialist one. "There's no point," he answered, "in counting imperialist wars...When the war's over, a party congress will convene, and they'll tell us what type of war it was"."Ivan's War, Catherine Merridale, Page 72

And thats just one example of a Soviet leadership indifferent to how policy related to public opinion. Those details were left to the political officers and party vizhods spread across the USSR.

No one would have been hurt more than the West by the revelation that the Holocaust was a fraud. The Soviets were the most anti-semitic power on Earth after the end of WWII, and in the Cold War era their allies were composed of minor anti-semitic powers. There is no motive for hiding this 'conspiracy', especially as Israel fell more and more under the American sphere of influence. Of course, in your 'reply' (Which was not a response) you ignored all but 4 lines of my post. I suppose that you do a lot better when you're simply talking to yourself.

The Russians were under no obligation to invent the issue in the first place. And moreover, they could have BLAMED the West for the forging of documents.

Moreover, this Illuminati Holocaust conspiracy could have been exposed by Khruschev when he brought Stalin's other dealings to light. Why would he specifically HIDE this event? There's no reason he would, of course, which is another glaring whole in this Soviet-Illuminati connection.

So then the Soviets didn't lose more than 13 million soldiers and civilians in the war? Wintermute might be the only Holocaust denier LEFT who denies EASTERN atrocities as well as concentration camps!

As I've already told you, the Soviets were more than willing to blame the West for fabrications, tricks, and academic traps.

Yeah, thats really funny.

But please, be more of a Nazi cheerleader. It really goes over well when reading it. It does suit you though. Its 'funny' how the death camps were in the East, and its 'funny' how the war criminals ran West.

But since you have claimed that its all just a bunch of lies, then why would the 'war criminals' be in the West, since the Soviets could throw anyone in a uniform and claim he was the group leader for a death squad which never existed?

Well you see, thats just the thing. The Russians allowed unprecedented access to the Soviet archives throughout the 1990s. I must have missed the revelations about the Great Holocaust Code, starring Tom Hanks.

ROFLMAO This is Wintermute using the PC nutter's approach to what Illusion already told us: The Illuminati, the Templars, Freemasons, and Rothschilds. Different names for the same thing.

I would ask the 'fence sitter' to examine his experience of the world. Consider what you've read of history, economics, and politics. Is this how the world works? Shadowy smoke filled rooms inventing historical events, plotting against nations, conspiring against you?

We used to give people psychiatric care for paranoia. Now, with the Internet, they're free to spew their sickness all over our computer screens. Its all cute at first, and weird. But after a while, it just becomes boring.

Let me guess: You have absolutely no evidence of this whatsoever.

Start a thread about Barbarossa and I'll happily thrash you on that issue as well. You've already taken this thread off topic enough. We won't be discussing the "defensive barbarossa operation" here.

If there are 'forged Holocaust documents' in that book, share them. Then identify what Western history books they have been used in. I suspect that there are not, otherwise I wouldn't have to ask you for them.

Evidence?

Evidence?

Evidence?

Evidence?

The reader is again invited to evaluate. Here we have a rather vulgar bigot in wintermute (Notice the unnecessary 'kike' statement, for shock value and to 'prove' himself to his fellow anti-smites. He's 'one of them'), who alternately suggests that the Soviets were the greatest evil in human history and 'alright guys, after all is said and done'. They 'took it easy' on the East Germans, they 'gave the major part of access' (?) to a German historian. Barbarossa saved the world.....but things wern't that bad after the Germans LOST that campaign.

This is an inconsistant worldview. Why though? The answer is quite clear. They have no answers to the question. They don't know WHY the Soviets would do this thing they claim they did, they just 'believe' they did it. They don't know WHO did it, they just 'believe' it was done.

They aren't interested in learning things, or achieving accurate conclusions. No crimes in history meet the burden of proof Holocaust deniers require. Wintermute believes in mass rapes and murders when the Soviets occupied Germany. Why though? There is less evidence of that than there is for the Holocaust. Virtually ALL of those claims are from 'eye witness testimony' by Germans, who have the same anti-Soviet motivation to lie that the Holocaust deniers claim Jewish victims of the Holocaust did.

Holocaust deniers are rabid believers in Stalinist atrocities. Why though? The estimates of those deaths vary by MILLIONS, not hundreds of thousands like the Holocaust. And yet while Holocaust deniers claim that such a variance of estimates means the thing never happened, they'll simper and whine about "Allied atrocities" ala gulags until you give them a pacifier.

But you have claimed that the Soviets were responsible for most of the fabricating. Why would the Soviets fabricate evidence to indict a subject population and then not use that? Why would the Soviets indict a West German population they were trying to seduce?

Wintermute is pretty much making this up as he goes along, folks, so be patient with him. Lets take stock of where he's 'led' us. The Soviets were planning on invading Europe, and the Germans bravely invaded them first! They saved Europe! But....then they lost the war, and as the Soviets advanced they fabricated evidence of the Holocaust (Simultaneously, the Western Allies were doing the same thing).

Then, they occupied Germany, and absolved the people they had framed of any responsibility for these atrocities they fabricated. Then they launched an anti-semitic purge, started arming the Arab neighbors of Israel, and considered launching an airborne and amphibious invasion of Israel. Israel, the nation they had conspired with the Rothschilds (I'm sorry, the "World Bank") to create.

They began to train and arm PLO terrorists while they secretly held the documents ordering the fabrication of the Holocaust.

Then, the Soviet Union fell apart. And as new Russians took the jobs of Soviet party hacks, they found these documents and independantly decided to hide them from academic view at the same time they cleverly allowed unprecedented acces to old Soviet archives. The Russians were willing to allow Westerners to look at documents where Stalin is signing off on executions, but were utterly unwilling to allow the documents ordering the forging of documents to be seen.

I assume that these documents were sent to the Vatican for safe keeping, right next to the secret birth certificate for Mary's love baby with Christ.

Troll #2 returns, still whining about Elie Wiesel:

Thats really interesting George, and thanks for your input. I notice, however, that you go on to say alternately:....

Of course, and if you reference my previous post, you'll see that one of my points is that to question some claims made about the 'Holocaust' is not to question all such claims.

Which, I guess, leads me to believe that you are 'so wise' that you didn't know that this 'geysers of blood' business refers to Babi Yar. So when I told you about Babi Yar, I was referring to this specific event. So your 'revision' is the idiotic point that a 'geyser of blood' didn't happen (Which is illustrative language), but you don't deny that Babi Yar happened. Thats really interesting. How is the CONSEQUENCE of the slaughter as relayed in illustrative langauge supposed to be 'some claim' about the Holocaust thats relevant to the actual Holocaust? The murder of people at Babi Yar is whats relevant. The height of blood squirting out of the ground where they're buried is not relevant.

By the way, you didn't answer the question. How many books on the Holocaust have you read?

The rest of your post is trolling, so I'll ignore it.

George, is your trolling due to the fact that you have nothing to contribute, but need to have my attention?

Except that the troll ignored the fact that I was asking for evidence:"b.) Other items often held up as pieces of 'evidence' are not necessarily fabrications, but the interpretation of their significance as 'evidence' is fundamentally flawed, predicated as it is on the inherent biases and preexisting beliefs of the investigators."Identify it. I no longer deal with generalitiesMeaning: "Other items" and "pieces of evidence" and "interpretations". How am I supposed to deal with "Other items", unnamed?

Its strange how off topic this thread needs to go. Why can't we get some answers to the two basic questions? Is this the best you people can do?

Is your lack of knowledge about the Holocaust and your inability to answer a few simple questions the reason you want to talk about WMD and the war in Iraq?

Is that how this works?

This topic isn't about racial matters. Its about facts regarding history. George referred to some vague, nebulous 'facts' in dispute. I asked for specifics, because I can't rebutt 'evidence' that he won't share.

Still waiting, BTW.

You noticed that it had been changed to Jews (By people unable to answer questions), which is why those posts have been moved to the Race forum. Under the title of "The Jews".

Back to Wintermute, who tries the ol' Burden-of-Proof Table Tennis tactic, and gets the ball thwacked back onto his side of the net.

Can anyone see an actual reply to my post in Wintermute's response?

We'll wait and see. I doubt we'll be hearing you address any substantial portion of the post. I can see how replying like this appeals to you. How about we try this: Why don't you prove to us that the US State Department, the World Bank, and the Harvard Economics Department equals Jewry. And why don't you prove that somewhere else than this thread, which isn't about your Jew fetish?

It must be nice to have a cheering section of preinstalled idiots who can keep applauding your tripe, Wintermute. It allows you to keep your illusions about how you're doing intact. Fortunately, I don't care about your Neo-Nazi cheering squad. Your inability to answer simple questions has been shown again and again. Why would you expect me to be familiar with the details of your particular lunacy regarding conspiracies to destroy Aryan Russia?

"I am a despicable troll, and I'm sorry for willfully misrepresenting your words"You're forgiven. Maybe you're not as despicable a troll as you appear.

"This is false. Please answer the question as asked above: do you continue to maintain that my account of the IMF/Harvard/the Clinton Administration is tantamount to Illuminism, Templarism, and the like? It would seem you are the one here who does not wish to answer questions.Wintermute"I'm not going to discuss the IMF/World Bank/Harvard economics department/Clinton State Department/Soros conspiracy absent its relevance in to this thread. If you can relate it to the Holocaust, we'll discuss it. If not, take it elsewhere. Preferably, to the swamp hut.

After which, the thread degenerates into whines, complaints and insults as the shambling jellymonsters (since reduced to two in number from the original 11) realised they have been pwn3d, again.

Well, I guess thats it. I'm sorry I was hard on you, Wintermute. After your spamming of reported posts, I've come to realize that I've deeply wounded you. You and George Clark both. Terrible thing. Between my harshness and my apparent 'moderator abuse', maybe I should just let you folks have this forum as an echo chamber.

Obviously Holocaust Deniers can't handle scrutiny.

Please stop trolling, George Rogers Clark. You've shown through your excessive neg repping, complaining about recieving negative reputation, and reported posts that you have a great deal of concern for the civility of the forum. If you have anything to add to the topic, please contribute. If you do not, please save it for the lounge.

Report the post, Dan, or start a thread in the Help Desk.

Backing away from my claims? Not at all. Everything I said stands, unassailed, since you ignored the entire post. Its just that it means a great deal to you. Enough, obviously, for you to suggest that just by replying to you I'm violating my job as a moderator. You made something like 3 or 4 reports in the span of twenty minutes. I hadn't realized I was being so hard on you.

I try not to excite emotional people. Its unnecessarily cruel. I just thought you fellows had thicker skin. My mistake. I'm quite sorry if I upset you, Wintermute.

Are you going to be ok if I answer you? I want to make sure of that before I go into detail.

Cue Wintermute storming off in a huff, vowing never to post on The Phora until it is 'cleaned up' (one assumes, code for cleansed of Jews, communists and fellow-travellers).

The final word, as of the time of this posting, goes to Petr, a college student and convinced Creationist. There's an irony in there somewhere.

You can be quite a drama queen, Winnie. Does this mean that you are not going to answer to my posts on thesethreads either?

Our prediction of where this thread will go... well, it's not actually our prediction, just something someone observed a good ten years ago about how these moonbats argue:

17. Although all of your arguments will be consistently blown to smithereens, just wait a few days or weeks and then re-post them.

Well, I would ask the same question of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers in The History Channel. I would ask them to present their narrative of what really happened in Europe from 1933 to 1945, and explain to me who organized the Holohoax, and how it was done. If such a great effort was made to forge documents, make people disappear or be silent, and create whole faked atrocities, faked photos, sham trials, coerced confessions, phone eyewitnesses, and so on, who did it? Specifically?

Where are the hidden operators who performed all these feats? Who directed this campaign. Where was it based? Which authority? Since this conspiracy has held over 60 years, how was it passed down from generation to generation to ensure continued compliance all around the world? Who were the Canadian, British, French, New Zealand, Japanese, and Falkland Island authorities to ensure continued compliance? How were all the wartime Nazis and their descendants kept silent for 60 years? How were those who took part in the conspiracy kept silent? What about their families and descendants?

Where is the paper trail for this conspiracy? How was it accomplished without a single memo?

And finally, if this conspiracy is so complete, so well-organized, and so perfect, why did they leave so many holes? Why didn't they forge the written order from Hitler to Himmler and other important documents? Why did they fail to wring confessions out of so many key Nazis? Why didn't they notarize Anne Frank's diary, or better yet, keep her alive to say, "Yup, I wrote this?"

Why did they let Bormann disappear and Eichmann and Mengele escape to Argentina? Why did it take the Israelis 25 years to find Eichmann, if they control the world? Why did they let Himmler, Ley, and Goering kill themselves without leaving behind a full confession? Why didn't they get one out of Rudolf Hess?

If the whole thing was to create a State of Israel subsidized by American dollars, why did they do such a lousy job, creating a truncated state surrounded by hostile neighbors? Why didn't they simply have Israel invade and conquer the whole Middle East, take over the oil supplies, and ensure high prices for the oil barons and bankers?

So I would ask these questions, and the answer I got was personal attack, vitriol, veiled threats about my home and job, taunting, and insults.

The reality is, they have no such narrative. And they know know damned well the Holocaust really happened. What they want to do is change that narrative from being a horrific act of mass murder and genocide into being the heroic Aryan race protecting itself from a tribe of subhuman and sneaking conspiratorial banker/Communists, by exterminating the Jewish menace just as it was rearing up its ugly head to wreck humanity. They want the concentration camps to become memorials to the guards, the commandant and Hitler, the Jews to become extinct, and history to say it was all heroic, justified, and necessary.

In short, it didn't happen, but the Jews got what they deserved. And anyone who disagrees with that idea gets death threats.

It's a topsy-turvy world in Holocaust denial, and a scary and depressing one.

This implies that the Hoax is monolithic instead of comprised of converging interests; these interests might align, breakaway and realign in the flux of modern politics and still remain true to the Faith. But a conspiracy from inside smoke-filled ivory halls is no more needed here than any other political or social movement, because that is a post hoc rationalization.

Basically you have half the world that "conspired" to subjugate the rest, over six decades ago. Is it really any stretch that they needed to lie a bit to further their goals, to justify themselves, their actions and their policies, and to maintain the accomplishment in everlasting Memory?

Now the mythology has taken on an irrational and conformist mentality like medieval religion surrounded by a sea of Infidels and Nonbelievers. One either swallows the enchilda whole or it becomes Orwellian.

"This implies that the Hoax is monolithic instead of comprised of converging interests; these interests might align, breakaway and realign in the flux of modern politics and still remain true to the Faith. But a conspiracy from inside smoke-filled ivory halls is no more needed here than any other political or social movement, because that is a post hoc rationalization.

Basically you have half the world that "conspired" to subjugate the rest, over six decades ago. Is it really any stretch that they needed to lie a bit to further their goals, to justify themselves, their actions and their policies, and to maintain the accomplishment in everlasting Memory?

Now the mythology has taken on an irrational and conformist mentality like medieval religion surrounded by a sea of Infidels and Nonbelievers. One either swallows the enchilda whole or it becomes Orwellian.

I don't see what is so hard to understand."

Instead of rambling like everyone expected you to, answer the questions kiwiwriter asked! That is, of course, if you truly believe the holocaust didn't happen. The truth is, holocaust denial is a very poorly thought-out lie that will never be accepted into the mainstream media. 5-6 million Jews dissapeared without a trace during WW2. Take Aktion Reinhardt, for example. 1.7 million jews where murdered in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The Denier's explanation is that they where transit camps where they where sent to "eastern territories." Unfortunately, that doesn't cut it. Displacing 1.7 million people would leave a HUGE paper trail complete with eyewitness testimony, railroad documents, and more. -from Sobe

Honestly, the question of how did the story survive is more puzzling than the validity of the story itself. Someone more informed could probably write a whole book on the subject. Considering the limited space (sorry that my posting is kind of long), here are some thoughts along with some questions that may have the same answers as your questions.

How did such a vast conspiracy happen? One possibility is that “…[it was] not organized centrally by any agency…[with] no blueprint … but [as] an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus….”. Of course the above quote is from Raul Hilberg explaining his views on how the Holocaust happened. If the extermination of millions can happen just with “an incredible meeting of the minds”, why not a war propaganda story that made it into the history books.

“Where is the paper trail for this conspiracy? How was it accomplished without a single memo?” I guess it’s not that crazy for people to ask the same question about a genocide of millions, especially considering that the Germans were notorious for their paper trail and their propensity for written orders.

Why didn’t Roosevelt, or Churchill, or their successors, or the Soviets including Khrushchev, or the West German authorities, or the holocaust historians, or even the former Nazis themselves do anything for about 4 decades to dispel the “Jewish soap” myth or the Nazi frame-up for the Katyn forest massacre? All of the above parties knew all along that both of those stories were bogus.

Was there a big conspiracy to keep the soap and Nazi guilt at Katyn alive for that long, who was responsible and how was it accomplished?

Why didn’t the Germans say anything in the years after the war? Hmm. Consider how easy it is to say anything now, 60 years later, when things are much calmer, just imagine then. The Germans are still displaying a ‘gas chamber’ in Dachau, even though no historian today believes that such a thing ever existed there.

We were lucky that some honest westerns researchers told us a few years after the war that the gassings stories in the West were mythical despite ‘confessions’, eyewitness testimonies etc. But we were not that lucky that the fate of the Polish ‘gas chambers’ was sealed behind the protective secrecy of the Iron Curtain long enough for the story to become an impenetrable dogma.

In the following 1986 statement of distinguished professor and former Mauthausen inmate Frenchman Michel de Bouard, consider how propaganda can become a myth and influence the thinking of honest people: "… in 1954, I spoke about gas chambers [at Mauthausen] twice….Where did I get the conviction that there was a gas chamber at Mauthausen? It was not during my stay in the camp, for neither myself nor anyone suspected there could be one; it is therefore an "extra" which I acquired after the war, admittedly…" [My emphasis]. If it was still in the history books that Mauthausen had a gas chamber I wonder if Mr. de Bouard would have come out publicly to say that it was not true.

History is replete with false stories that stayed around for years or even centuries. A combination of propaganda, fears, rumors, persecutions, taboos, political, religious and financial interests, and often a strong desire to want to believe it, all loosely can intertwine to create a lasting myth.

In this case, eventually we may blame it all on the Nazis as some did with the soap story. Two French-Jewish teachers laid the foundation for that in 1986: " the Nazis had faked their confessions, and only mentioned gas chambers in order to plant a delayed action 'bomb' against the Jews, an instrument of diversion and, why not, of blackmail.”

This anecdote will not shed any light on the question at hand, that being, how such an alleged conspiracy has survived ardent scrutiny from members of academia the world over for 60 years running. It will, however, confirm that when asked point blank to explain the machinations of such a conspiracy, revisionists will turn tail and run.

During a Holocaust Seminar I attended for professors of History, a survivor who was addressing the audience was abruptly interrupted by a fellow who "crashed" the seminar and leapt onto the stage. To his credit, the gentleman who had been speaking turned over the microphone...convinced, I later found out, that such blatant ignorance should be given an open forum in which to self-destruct.

The audience's anger and outrage soon gave way to morbid curiosity as this pseudo-intellectual spun his tale of conspiracy the center of which were predictably, the Jews.

I believe the audience's open-minded reaction left our seminar "crasher" dumbfounded as he was persuaded to stay (actually blocked from exiting the stage by one of the organizers) and answer questions from members of the audience.

We managed to lull him into a false sense of security and I believe he thought he had persuaded a few of the educators present with his nonsensical diatribe because he seemed to relax and commandeered the microphone once again.

Before long, however, the inevitable question was posed. The speaker was asked to extrapolate on his conspiracy theory WITH a detailed account of how a group of people, no matter how powerful, could manipulate the rest of the world's population into believing that a genocide of such proportions had taken place. What methods had they employed to hoodwink free-thinking individuals? Such an undertaking would have to be intrepid indeed to convince a single country. How had it been able to convince a host of other nations as well? AND, even if possible, how had they been able to maintain complete secrecy? How was it that they had not suffered a single defection? An individual who, perhaps due to a disagreement with "the group," might opt to break ranks after 60 years and expose the whole shabang. Imagine the wealth and status that such a person could attain for finally offering up proof positive of the biggest historical hoax EVER perpetrated! Was this ring of conspirators totally void of greed, mercenary tendencies and desire for fame and fortune?

Needless to say, once forced to deviate from his well-rehearsed rote, he was exposed for what he was: a 40-something, thinly-veiled biggot and neo-nazi who had never bothered to research ANY historical event as a whole.

In a matter of minutes, he went from nothing more than a disruptive nuisance to being regarded as sublimely ridiculous. He was so easy a target that we toyed with him ad nauseum and after we'd had our fill, relegated him to the stature befitting such an individual...beneath contempt. The more he stammered and stumbled, the louder the sound of laughter from the audience became.

Ultimately and quite predictably, he ran off the stage and out of the room, shouting profanity as he did so.

After experiencing such a display, I say give them ALL a venue, preferably a "live" one, and allow the populace to hear what stupidity, hatred and down right ignorance sounds like! I daresay, even the most ardent skeptics will not wish to ally themselves with such rabble!